The Opium Lady - Joanne Soper-Cook

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Résumé :
JOANNE SOPER-COOK is such a spellbinding storyteller that she can lead her willing captives anywhere. In her new story collection The Opium Lady, she draws her readers into the far corners of human yearning. The Opium Lady resembles an old family snapshot album. A photograph heads each story, and each freezes a defining moment in a different person's life. The teller of the tales is the person guiding the reader through the album. Who is this guide? How down he or she know the secrets of so many people? Some live in Maryland, some live in the Newfoundland outport of Guernsey, and some lives in other places. They're a mixed lot--rich and poor, men, women, and children, the scandalizers and the scandalized, housewives and farmers, tradesmen, charlatans, and ne'er-do-wells. The Opium Lady herself is an actress in vaudeville, a fan-dancer, really, horrified to discover that her escort has taken her to a snake-handling church. Various members of this motley cast pop up in the stories of others. They all seem to be connected, but how? It's clear that the pieces will fit together, but Soper-Cook hands over the missing link only at the very end. Newfoundland author JOANNE SOPER-COOK was born in Hant's Harbour and now lives in St. John's. She is the author of three novels, most recently the highly acclaimed Waterborne.

Biographie:
JoAnne Soper-Cook was born in outport Newfoundland and now lives in St. John's. Soper-Cook got her start as a writer at the age of eight, when her mother mailed a story she'd written in to the editor of a local newspaper, who published it She is the author of four critically acclaimed novels: Waterborne (published by Goose Lane Editions in 2002), The Wide World Dreaming, Waking the Messiah and A Cold-Blooded Scoundrel (published as an ebook). The Opium Lady is her first book of stories. The daughter of a long line of Newfoundland fishermen, JoAnne Soper-Cook was raised by a Scottish war bride in a tiny fishing village on a rocky island in the middle of the ocean. She loves to walk and she says that she spends too much time outdoors. Her dog, a Labrador retriever cross, is named Elton John. Her interests include New Age Music, Celtic instrumental, singing in the shower, cult TV, tennis, off-road cycling, and guided meditation. She owns crystals and isn't afraid to use them. Her stories, poetry, and journalism have appeared in TickleAce, Waxing and Waning, Rant, the Muse, Atmospherics and Essays on Canadian Writing and in several Newfoundland newspapers, including the Carbonear Compass, the Southern Gazette and the Clarenville Packet. Her stories and commentary have been broadcast on CBC Radio and her plays have been performed at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's. Soper-Cook has also worked as an editor (for Jesperson Press) and as a teacher at colleges and universities in Newfoundland....